I wish the holds on the nodules in the ocean could be sped up. They could be a new source that could actually be ethically sourced.
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Siddharth Kara is an author and expert on modern-day slavery, human trafficking, and child labor. Look for his new book, "Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives," on January 31, 2023. https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/people/siddharth-kara
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I wish the holds on the nodules in the ocean could be sped up. They could be a new source that could actually be ethically sourced.
Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Siddharth Kara, Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out.
The Joe Rogan Experience.
Showing by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.
Thank you very much for coming here, man. Really appreciate it.
Oh, thank you for inviting me, Joe.
My pleasure. This subject, first of all, the title of your book?
Cobalt Red.
And it is out January...
31st.
31st.
And how did you...
Please detail the journey that you went on to write this book and why it's of
concern to you.
Yeah. Okay.
Well, I started traveling to the Congo five years ago.
I've been doing research on slavery and child labor for about 20 years,
traveling all around the world, documenting slaves and child laborers, human
trafficking.
And this came across my radar maybe seven years ago.
People started talking in the field about cobalt.
Cobalt's in the batteries.
It's in the Congo.
The conditions are horrible.
And I had no idea.
I'd never heard of this.
So I started planning to take trips to get down there.
And I took my first trip back in 2018.
My plan was I thought I would try to lay the groundwork to do some academic
research.
And the things I saw there were so appalling and heart-wrenching and urgent
that I changed my approach.
I thought people need to know about this.
I need to write a book.
And so I started planning more trips and I just kept going back.
And the reason this is important, Joe, and we can dig into this in more depth,
throughout the whole history of slavery, I mean, I'm going back centuries,
never, never in human history has there been more suffering that generated more
profit
and was linked to the lives of more people around the world ever, ever in
history than what's happening in the Congo right now.
And the reason I say that is this.
The cobalt that's being mined in the Congo is in every single lithium-ion
rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today.
Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop, and crucially, every electric
vehicle.
So you and I, we can't function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt.
And three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo.
And it's being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.
And so that's why people need to know, because by and large, the world doesn't
know what's happening in the Congo.
It's something that people sort of know peripherally, that they call them
conflict minerals,
and they know that they're coming from an area of the world that's very poor.
But I don't think people are aware of how horrible it is.
There have been some documentaries that have been done on it, and they're all
terrifying.
Yeah, so conflict minerals was phase one, and that's actually not cobalt.
What is the term, what does it refer to, conflict minerals?
So conflict minerals, also called the 3TG minerals, are tin, tungsten, tantalum,
and gold.
And those are in the eastern Congo.
And that catastrophe started around the year 2000, late 1990s, 2000, shortly
after the Rwandan genocide.
The militias moved in, and the eastern Congo is sitting on some of the largest
reserves in the world
of those 3TG minerals, especially tantalum.
And those are all used in microprocessors.
And you can think back to, you know, around the year 2000, mobile phones first
started coming out and gaining traction.
I still remember my little StarTAC flip phone that I had from Motorola.
You remember that?
And all that supply was coming out of eastern Congo.
Militias and warlords were forcing the local population at gunpoint, machete
point, to dig this stuff out.
And it was flowing up into the formal supply chain, into mostly those first-generation
cell phones.
And that became known as conflict minerals.
Cobalt started later.
Cobalt really took off about 10, 12 years ago.
And it's in another part of the country, in the mining provinces in the
southeast of the Congo.
And cobalt took off because it started to be used in lithium-ion batteries to
maximize their charge and stability.
And it just so happens that the Congo, just as it was sitting on more than half
the world's reserves of coltan, and of course a lot of gold and diamonds and
other things, is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined.
And it's in a small little patch of the Congo, southeastern corner, a part that
used to be called Katanga.
And before anybody knew what was happening, Chinese government, Chinese mining
companies took control of almost all the big mines, and the local population
has been displaced, is under duress.
And they dig in absolutely subhuman, gut-wrenching conditions for a dollar a
day, feeding cobalt up the supply chain into all the phones, all the tablets,
and especially electric cars.
And we're looking at a video now.
Jamie, what is this, the mines?
This is his video.
So, I think so.
This is so crazy to see.
This is the bottom of the supply chain of your iPhone, of your Tesla, of your
Samsung.
I mean, I'm just naming those companies.
It's all of them, right?
All of them.
We're not just picking on them.
And here's what you need to know, Joe, about this video.
I was the first outsider to get into this mine.
And that's why it's just a really short video that I was able to take.
This is an industrial cobalt mine where there's not supposed to be one artisanal
miner.
Now, that's the term used for people who are just digging by hand, as opposed
to tractors and excavators.
There's not supposed to be one here.
That's what the story is told at the top of the chain.
This mine, and I can name it, it's called Shibara.
There's not supposed to be one artisanal miner here, according to the consumer-facing
tech companies and EV companies buying this cobalt.
Lo and behold, I walk into this place, and this is what I see.
There's more than 15,000 human beings crammed into that pit, digging by hand.
And if you have sound, you hear the mallets, you hear the shouting, you hear
the grunts.
It's a massive humanity.
You might expect to see a scene like this.
So, there's a term that gets used, clean cobalt.
There's no clean cobalt.
It's not real.
No.
No.
It's all marketing.
It's all PR.
It's a fiction.
Just like that place.
There's not supposed to be any artisanal mining there.
It's all done industrially.
That's the story told at the top of the chain.
And people assume, people I mean the marketing teams at big tech and EV
companies assume, well, who's going to go down there and actually walk into the
place and grab a video that shows, no, it's actually all raw human force that
is clanking that cobalt out of the ground.
So, there's no clean cobalt.
There's not a single company on planet Earth that makes a device that has a
rechargeable battery in it that can reliably and justifiably claim that their
cobalt isn't coming from sources like that.
And that's the truth that needs to get out there.
That's the truth people need to understand because this is a story that goes
back generations.
There's these fictions told at the top of the chain about what conditions are
like at the bottom.
And truth seekers have to go find that truth and enlighten civilization so that
people get agitated about it and want to do something about it.
So, there's no clean cobalt.
Let's just make that totally abundantly clear.
And anyone that claims otherwise is either peddling in falsehoods or is recklessly
ignorant of the truth.
Are there any industrialized cobalt mines that use machinery and don't use
slavery and don't use child labor and don't use these people that live in unimaginable
poverty?
I've never seen one.
And I've been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines.
Here's why I say that.
Number one, they all or almost all will have scenes like that on them.
Thousands of individuals clanking away for a dollar or two a day.
Okay?
They don't have safety equipment.
All that stuff, that cobalt's toxic.
Toxic to breathe.
And they're breathing it in all day.
No masks.
No masks.
No filtration systems.
No gloves.
No, half those guys are in flip-flops.
All right?
So, almost all the industrial mines will have scenes like that.
So, that's number one.
They'll say there are no artisanal miners there.
No children there.
And if you, like, zoom in, you'll see that amongst that sea of humanity, there
are thousands of kids.
Teenage boys, in this case.
Because that requires a certain amount of force to clank away in that pit.
Number two.
There are hundreds of other artisanal mining sites scattered in the mining
provinces.
Outside of industrial mines.
There are artisanal miners in the industrial mines.
And then, just on the other side of the fence, there'll be a sea of humanity
digging there as well.
Because it's not like at the fence, the ore body stops.
There's copper, cobalt, other things outside as well.
So, there'll be hundreds of sites where there are hundreds of thousands of
people across the mining provinces digging.
All that production is sold right back to the industrial mining companies.
So, it enters their supply chain as well.
And then, so they take what they extract with industrial equipment, artisanal
miners inside the mine,
artisanal miners including children outside the mine.
It all gets dumped together into the same batch of acids to process and then
flows up the chain.
And, again, no one can reasonably claim that their cobalt, even if they say,
that industrial mine, totally clean, don't believe what Siddharth is saying,
that's a made-up fake video,
they can't demonstrate reliably that all the other cobalt being dug up by kids
in thousands of sites across the mining provinces
isn't also flowing into their supply chain.
Is there another source of cobalt in the world that's ethically supplied?
So, last year, so 2021 is the last year there's data,
about 72%, almost three-fourths, of the world's supply of cobalt came out of a
small patch of the Congo.
And then there's like 3% Russia, 3% Australia, 3% Morocco, you know, everyone
else is 3%.
And I don't know what the conditions are there.
I imagine in Australia, mining follows standards of dignity and decency and
labor and sustainability and so on.
But there's not enough cobalt outside of the Congo to meet demand.
And demand projections are four, five, six hundred percent increase in cobalt
demand in the next decade or two,
primarily being driven by adoption of electric vehicles.
Each battery pack in an EV requires up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt.
That's a thousand times what's required for a smartphone.
So, huge demand as the world transitions from internal combustion engines to
electric vehicles,
which is a net good thing, except for the people in the Congo.
So, there's not enough other cobalt out there, even if all the non-Congo cobalt
was perfectly sourced,
there's not enough other cobalt out there to meet demand.
These companies that we talked about that use all this stuff,
whether it's electric vehicle companies or cell phone manufacturers,
obviously they're aware of this.
Yes, no question. They have to be.
Have they made any attempts to mitigate this in any way?
The truth, Joe, is no, not sufficient efforts.
Most of what is done is PR statements, marketing.
All these companies will say we have zero tolerance policies on child labor.
We ensure standards of dignity and human rights for every member of our supply
chain,
down to the mining level.
They'll all say this, down to the mining level.
And they say it.
And they may throw some money at the odd NGO or coalition or alliance that's
meant to be working on these things.
Nothing's actually happening on the ground.
And that's what my book will demonstrate, you know, as I take the reader on the
journey from place to place, mind to mind.
There's this fiction that exists outside of the Congo of what companies are
doing and what the conditions are like.
And then there's the reality underneath those layers of obfuscation.
There's the reality.
There's the truth on the ground.
And not one company, not one entity up the chain is doing remotely enough to
ensure that the dignity and human rights of the people of the Congo,
not to mention the environment, because all the mining companies are just polluting
and clear-cutting forests to build and expand mines.
They're not doing nearly enough to respect the people and earth of the Congo,
while we outside enjoy our, you know, renewable, gadget-driven lifestyles.
When you first started researching this book and when you first were aware of
this issue,
what was the difference between your initial perception versus what you found?
So, going in,
I was expecting to see
some child labor,
poor working conditions,
and probably
some poor environmental practices.
And that first trip
hit me like a thunderclap.
And I've seen a lot, okay?
I mean, I've done research in more than 50 countries in the grit and the grime
and the misery and the sub,
the underbelly of humanity.
And
it hit me like a thunderclap, because the scale was beyond anything I would
have imagined.
There are hundreds of thousands of people, tens of thousands of children,
caked in toxic grime and filth,
digging this
vital mineral out of the ground
in medieval conditions.
It's like going back in time.
You know,
you imagine what mining was like three or four hundred years ago,
or the early days of coal mining.
You know,
it's that bad
and worse,
because we're supposed to be living in this enlightened era.
So the scale of it shocked me.
So the scale of it shocked me.
The severity shocked me.
To see kids up to their shoulders, caked in this filth and grime and toxic, I
mean, to see teenagers walking around with babies on their back, all inhaling
this toxic cobalt dust.
To see them barely scraping by on a dollar a day, two dollars a day. And then
as I, as I interviewed these workers, I use the term worker, they're not
workers at all. They're oppressed, degraded slaves.
And then as I interviewed them, the level of injury, broken legs, shattered spines,
toxic contamination, cancers, birth defects, what's happening to the people
there.
And then the, the, the most heart wrenching thing of all, there's probably, um,
10 to 15,000 tunnels.
I think I even sent you guys one or two videos of, of what these tunnels look
like.
Um, the artists will dig tunnels 30, 40 meters down, uh, to get to some of the
higher grade deposits, um, and they don't have supports, rock bolts,
ventilation shafts, anything like that.
And those tunnels collapse every week in the Congo, a tunnel collapses and
everyone who's down there, 30, 40, 50 men and boys, boys, meaning kids are
buried alive.
And when I started hearing those stories and I heard them on my first trip, I,
it just ripped me apart because I thought this is the bottom of trillion dollar
supply chains.
When I plug in my smartphone, I don't have an electric car, but if I did, when
I plug that in, I'm plugging in that level of suffering and death.
I mean, I can't imagine a more horrid way of dying than being buried alive.
And they're down there trying to get that dollar or two, because that's the
difference between eating and surviving and not.
Uh, and that, that's what I wasn't anticipating, just the level of severity.
And if you're, if your listeners are familiar with, you know, what it was like
in colonial Africa and in the Congo during the Belgian times, I mean, I thought
I was back in King Leopold's regime, where there's just utter disregard for the
humanity of, of the people in the Congo.
All that matters is the loot, all that matters is the loot, the resource, get
it out, make money and to hell with the population, to hell with the people
there.
Uh, they're either a, uh, efficient slave labor force or they're just in the
way.
Uh, but there's loot in the dirt and we need that loot.
Uh, and that's, that's the dynamic down there.
This must have been so difficult for you to, to grasp and to report on and just
to, what was it like for you to just experience this?
Uh, Joe, it's, you know, I haven't, actually, this is the first time I'm
talking about it, like in any sort of extended way.
I mean, I wrote my book, um, much of the pandemic was me just, was me writing,
uh, and, and that was hard, you know, cause there's a lot I had to relive.
Um, uh, I take the reader on a journey, um, uh, you know, in college, we all
read Heart of Darkness, Conrad, and that's the first Belgian horror, a Congo
horror, uh, you know, was the, for rubber.
Uh, and, and, uh, I'm gonna answer your question, but there's a painfully
powerful bit of history here that people, people need to know.
So, Leopold got his hands on the Congo in 1885, personal property, he owned the
whole thing as personal property, King Leopold, of the Belgians.
Um, and the, uh, car, Benz invented the car, 1885, internal combustion engine,
it had, um, uh, steel-clad wooden wheels, couldn't go very fast before those
things fell apart.
And then in 1888, this chap Dunlop invents a rubber tire, and now the whole car
revolution is taking off, because you can actually drive those things far and
fast.
And the Congo happened to be sitting on one of the largest rubber tree forests
in the world.
So, Leopold deployed this, uh, mercenary army to enslave, uh, terrorize, and
torture the population to get rubber out of the forest, the loot, bring it up
the chain, and turn it into tires.
And he, he walked away with billions of dollars doing this, um, but that was
the first car revolution that led to horror in the Congo.
And Conrad was in the Congo in 1890, he saw this, that's what inspired Heart of
Darkness.
So now we come across the second car revolution, coming to electric vehicles.
And wouldn't you know it, that once again, the Congo is sitting on more of this
necessary, crucial mineral, cobalt, than the rest of the world combined.
And it's that same thing happening all over again, um, latest chapter and it
bearing witness to that and knowing what became, came before, right?
That this isn't just one isolated thing.
Oh, new problem.
Let's fix it.
That it's been happening for generations to the people in that part of the
world, in the heart of Africa, um, having that in mind and, and bearing witness
to that has been just devastating.
And, uh, as I said, I, I've not really been talking about it.
I've kind of feared having to talk about it because there are memories that I've
kept really deep down, except when I wrote.
Um, so I structured my book a bit like Heart of Darkness.
You know, you go up river to find Kurtz and Kurtz reveals a certain truth.
Um, there's one road in the mining provinces that goes up road and I take the
reader up that road to an event that I think reveals the truth.
Uh, and it just gets darker and bleaker as you travel up road.
And, uh, the things I've saw, I saw and the things I've seen, man, they just,
they hurt.
They hurt because I know it's like what kind of economy can transform the
degradation of innocent, impoverished children into shiny phones and cars, you
know?
Uh, and we are living lives that are so disconnected yet intimately connected
to that horror.
Um, and it, it's just been, look, if, if what I do can give voice to what's
happening there, to the people living there who are otherwise crying into an abyss,
then it's all worth it to me.
Uh, and if some good comes of it, uh, God willing, there will be some good that
comes of this journey.
Um, it'll be worth it to me, but yeah, to answer your question, it's, it's
taken a toll.
I can't even imagine.
And when you first started doing this, how did you gain access?
How did you get in there?
And how much resistance did you experience in trying to report on this?
It seems like it would be a very dangerous thing for you to do because the
consequences of this information getting out there.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
It, uh, these are heavily guarded secrets, uh, because there's so much money at
stake.
Uh, and one does not just waltz into the Congo's mining provinces and start
poking around and asking questions.
And, um, that's a one way ticket to a very bleak outcome.
Um, I think, you know, it took me 18 years of other research into slavery and
child labor to be ready for this.
Uh, if, if I had come across this in year one or five or whatever, I'd have botched
it up, uh, or not even known how to go about it.
Um, uh, but the, the most important thing is ground relationships.
Um, and so I took some time building ground relationships with people who could,
um, guide me safely, get me into mining areas safely, uh, who I could put my
life in their hands and know that, uh, they were going to use good judgment.
Um, uh, so it's about trust and relationships on the ground, um, first and
foremost.
Um, and, and then, you know, through those relationships, I was able to get
into, um, um, deep into the mining areas, mines that are controlled by militias,
mines that are controlled by the Republican guard.
I mean, you have every face and facet of gigantic industrial mines.
Um, they're as big, as big as a European city, uh, and then just, just swaths
of open terrain that are being dug up by local villagers.
You know, you have everything down there.
Um, but the ones that are most heavily guarded, the big mines, you know, some
of them I never got into.
Try as I might, I could never, I mean, there's always, they're, they're called
FARDC, the, the army down there.
And they, they're just guys with Kalashnikovs.
There'll be 50 of them at the entranceway.
And you, I, I never got in, but I would talk to the people who work there back
in their villages.
Um, and some of the industrial mines I did get into.
And of course the open terrain artisanal sites I could get to, but it's all
about, um, I had to be very careful.
Um, um, fortunately, um, there are a good number of Indians in the Congo.
So I could blend in, um, uh, and didn't really stick out.
Um, uh, so that helped, uh, in my movements in the mining provinces.
Um, I traveled very lean.
Um, oftentimes we'd have to move in a hurry, um, from one place to another, one
village to another.
Uh, everything I was willing to leave behind.
And I had my passport Velcroed to my calf muscle, you know, like it, that like,
I, if we had to go in a hurry, um, and once or twice we did that, I needed that.
Like I, everything else can, is, is, is expendable, but you don't want to get
stuck in the Congo without, you know, your documents.
Um, I mean, the number of checkpoints, I said, there's just one road and that
thing is so heavily guarded and the number of checkpoints, just pull up.
Let me see your documents.
Let me see this.
Let me see that.
Um, go through your, your bags, go through your stuff and then, you know, move
along.
Eventually you might have to, uh, offer someone, they call it a cold drink.
If you give me a cold drink, I can go through first time.
Someone said that to me, I said, no, where the hell do we get a cold drink out
here?
I mean, we're in the middle of nowhere.
No, no.
Cold drink means, uh, payage toll.
Hmm.
That's interesting.
Euphemism.
Yeah.
So, um, so it's, it's, I, I had to rely on local contacts to get, to, to get
around and use my own experience and judgment about how far to push, uh, and
when not to push.
What, what, what was, what did you use as an excuse to be there?
So, yeah, I had a range of cover stories, um, uh, when I'd go into mining areas,
um, you know, as I mentioned, there's some Indians down there.
Um, some of them are mineral traders, some of them are laborers, many of them
run hotels and guest houses.
So, I could be a guy, Indian guy, looking to get into, uh, mineral trading, um,
looking to, uh, invest in transportation.
There's so much, um, need, need meaning industrial need to, to get trucks and
transport all this stuff that's coming out of the ground, uh, out of the
country and up the supply chain.
Um, uh, with colleagues, uh, or government officials that I met, I was myself,
which is a researcher from America, you know, I, I was up front about it and I
needed to be.
There are times when I needed stamps and signatures of government officials, um,
uh, to keep myself safe.
Uh, and by that, I mean, in the, in, in the scenario, in the worst possible
scenarios where I'm in a remote mine and there's some guys with Kalashnikovs
and machetes coming after me.
Um, one of, one of the first things my guide said is we need to get the stamp
and signature of someone from the governor's office, uh, on your documentation.
So we can show that because that means you're, uh, you've got permission.
You're under the watchful eye of the governor.
And so they can't kill you.
They're just going to send you away.
And that, that advice saved my life on more than one occasion, um, uh, having
that stamp and signature.
And so, so with government people, I was who I was with NGOs.
I was who I was, uh, when I got into mining areas, um, you know, to get access
or to get into cobalt marketplace.
I would be, maybe be a mineral trader or some investor or someone looking to
help transport minerals.
And, um, but yeah, those were, those are my stories.
So as you entered into this world, were you aware that you needed all these
signatures?
How did you go about getting them?
No, I, I, I had no idea.
So one of my, one of my guides on my first trip, uh, before we went into the cobalt,
you know, into the mining areas, you land into a town called Lubumbashi,
which is the head of a province called, uh, Hokitanga province, old colonial
town.
Now it's the mining capital in the southeastern part of the country.
So that's where, you know, there's some government buildings.
And, um, as I talked through my plan, what I wanted to try to achieve, um, what
I wanted to try to see, um, my very first guide said,
Okay, we need to go and just, you have to explain this to someone in the
governor's office and hope that they'll give you your signature, their
signature and stamp on, uh, it's called engagement de prison charge, um,
commitment to, um, uh, protect, um, uh, documentation.
Um, and he said, just go and make the case and try to get that stamp and
signature because we'll need that.
We may need that.
If you want to go into these places, you, you, you, you, that will save your
life.
Uh, and he was right on that very first trip.
Uh, I was in a mining area north of a town called, uh, Kambov, kids everywhere.
Um, we had done our sort of recon that it was clear of militias that day.
You know, there was always planning when I went into these areas, pre-planning,
um, to minimize risk.
And I was talking to some kids.
Um, there was, um, there was two, uh, two girls, they're probably 14 and 15 and,
you know, they each had babies on their backs as they were in this trench
digging cobalt.
Um, and I was walking down the trench to a group of boys.
So one boy has a t t shirt that said AIG and I thought to myself, first of all,
that there's an AIG t shirt out here, you know, blew my mind.
And, and I remembered like that, that was one of the big financial companies
had to be bailed out in the 2008 financial crisis, $150 billion or something.
And I thought, man, like that kind of money here, you know, what a difference
it could make.
Um, anyway, so I was talking to those kids and suddenly there was gunshots, uh,
and they knew what was happening.
They all jumped into a trench and I turned around as me and my guide and there's
a pack of guys with Kalashnikov's machetes running at us and they operate.
These militias operate in little units.
There'll be a guy, you know, the, um, head of the group, uh, and then there's
maybe, you know, 10, 15 guys.
They call them militia, they call them commandos, various names.
Um, so they started coming at us, um, and immediately started roughing me up,
grabbed my backpack, threw my stuff on the ground, um, started kicking us
around, demanded to see my phone to see if I were taking photos.
Like they know that there are people who are trying to figure out what's the
truth around here.
And, um, I looked at my guide at the blood drained from his face and he very
quietly and calmly told them he has some, he has a signature.
Um, and I, I, my stuff was all on the dirt at that point.
Um, I found the folder that had that precious piece of paper under the boot of
one of these guys.
I pulled it out, showed it to the commandos leader.
Um, that kind of calmed them down enough that they let us, they, you know, walk
out of there.
Uh, but it would have gone the other way.
Um, but my guide knew, you know, that's what I mean.
Like you, it's about those ground relationships.
People know their world.
Like I can't go in presuming to know that world, how to navigate it, how to be
safe, how not to cause harm inadvertently.
I mean, all these things go through a researcher's mind.
Um, but he knew that we might need that.
And it turns out, um, on that day, man, uh, you and I wouldn't be having this
conversation, I think, if, uh, if I hadn't followed his advice.
How did you get the confidence of these people to let you do this?
And are there people there that are sympathetic to what you're doing because
they want the truth to come out?
You said it.
There are, you know, there's not much civil society in the Congo.
Um, but there is a, there is a small civil society there.
You know, local activists, little NGOs, they have to be very careful, um, in
how they operate.
Uh, um, so they don't get on the wrong side of the wrong officials, especially
the mining sector.
Mining is everything to Congo.
Uh, 70, 80% of the government's budget is coming from mining.
Um, uh, so, um, uh, I, I just speak from the heart.
Uh, I, I want to find a way to help you amplify your voices.
Cause no one's listening.
No one even knows to look over there.
Um, or not enough people know to look over there, let alone take an interest
and start listening.
And I'm here to help bridge the gap, to form some connective tissue between the
whole world out there that cannot function without you.
And, and the truth that you're experiencing, uh, and that's why I'm here.
So I'm in your hands.
Um, you tell me what to do.
Uh, I'll do it.
You tell me how to stay safe.
That's what I'll do.
Uh, uh, I'd like to see the truth.
I'd like to talk to people.
I want to bring those voices to the outside world, but I'm in your hands.
Um, and I think just speaking from the heart, um, uh, and conveying my genuine
interest above all to do no harm, uh, and to try and, uh, a shine light in this
heart of darkness and then be bring those voices out of the country, um, to a
broader world.
Um, and that's what they want.
You know, the, the, the, the worst feeling in the world or one of the worst
feelings in the world has to be to be in the midst of immense suffering and
feel that no one can see you.
No one can hear you.
No one even cares.
I mean, to cry into silence.
Um, uh, and so the, to have a chance to feel that someone will eventually hear
you.
I think, you know, that's what I came hoping, uh, to try and achieve.
And, um, there were enough guides, enough people, enough locals who, who
trusted me.
I mean, I had to trust them, but, um, the more important trust went from them
to me because I could be someone who was reckless, who was careless, who was
after his own thing, um, who was in it for, for me, uh, um, and could cause so
much more harm.
Um, uh, or, or just take from them and, and leave.
Yeah.
And that's not me.
And I think that, you know, as I developed relationships, more and more people,
uh, although it's a small number, you know, felt that and felt that, um, kinship
with me.
So when these commandos came in and they were shooting guns and, and screaming
at you, were they concerned that you were there to expose the conditions?
That's right.
Um, you know, the, the, the big anxiety for everyone up the chain is the truth.
Wow.
And, um, so many people are playing their part in suppressing the truth.
You know, it's not just the marketing departments at consumer facing tech and
EV companies.
They're doing their part to suppress the truth, but it's all the way down to
little commando units and militias that have their stake in this game and they
want to suppress the truth.
Um, uh, and they're often going to be, they'll often be on the payroll of a
mining company, you know, um, keep people out because what happened was, you
know, just like I first heard about this.
Um, probably back in 2015, um, it took me a couple of years to figure it out
and then get in there, you know, in 2018, you know, journalists have been down
there.
There've been some journalists who've gotten in there and there've been some
stories written, um, especially around 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, those few years,
you know, people were getting in there and getting a little piece of it and
coming out and writing a story.
Um, and so people on the ground got more anxious about that.
So there's a lot of, um, uh, uh, anxiety about journalists, researchers, NGOs
kind of coming in and trying to find the truth.
And, and so there's the level of, um, security, especially in the last few
years has, has, uh, increased significantly to try to keep, to keep people out
because the minute, you know, once the, the voices of the people of the Congo
start emerging and a book or a documentary or, um, stories get written.
There'll be a critical mass, right?
Eventually it'll pass some threshold where enough people say, wait a minute,
what are you talking about?
What's going on here?
Um, I don't want to, I don't want to feel that when I plug in my phone, there's
some kid in the Congo dying for it or that here I am trying to make a green
choice buying this electric car.
But the patch of Congo where these minerals come from, the trees have been
clear cut, the rivers have been polluted, the airs, airs been polluted.
Like why?
Why is my green choice black and red for them?
Um, that doesn't seem right.
Um, that doesn't seem right.
So no one up the chain wants that day to arrive or they want to postpone it as
long as possible.
I think it's inevitable, uh, that eventually, uh, the companies atop the cobalt
chain will have to, uh, accept, uh, the truth and then respond to it.
Um, but they want to push that out as far as possible because, uh, well, for
reasons I don't actually understand.
And I'll tell you that candidly, Joe, I don't understand why these companies,
because as we, as we agreed, they all know what's happening down there.
That's why they've got their marketing departments on it.
They all know what's happening down there.
Why is it that they just don't want to solve the problem?
I, it's not complicated.
It would probably cost them a rounding error on their balance sheet to just
invest in treating those people with the same respect and dignity as the people
in corporate headquarters.
They're all part of the same chain.
It's not that the cobalt goes to the moon.
It goes to these companies.
So they're linked, but they don't accept responsibility for them.
And for some reason they feel it's okay to treat them and the world around them
like trash.
And I think deep down inside, no one will ever come out and admit it.
But I think there's only one answer to the question, why haven't they fixed the
problem yet?
And that is because it's poor, wretched Africans that no one cares about.
That's the truth.
And that's been the truth for centuries, hasn't it?
Uh, uh, going back to the slave trade, going back to the colonization of Africa,
it's, it's in, it's embedded in the framework and structure of a global economy
that again, it's about the loot and the money.
And the people there are either fit to be brutes or to be moved out of the way.
Uh, that's the only answer to the question why companies that are rolling in
profits beyond, beyond measure, wouldn't say, hey, hey, the bottom of this
supply chain, like this thing that's in our batteries that we really, really
need.
Um, conditions are pretty bad and that's, that's not acceptable because we
claim that we uphold human rights and dignity and sustainability all the way
down our supply chain.
Let's send a few people down there and, and work on this.
Has, has one CEO of any of these companies ever stepped foot at the bottom of
their own supply chain to see for themselves what's happening there?
I mean, why is it that I had to go?
I'm not running a tech company.
I'm not running an EV company, yet I felt somehow responsible for what's
happening down there.
How come they don't feel responsible enough to take a trip, one trip on their
private jet down there to see for themselves?
Oh, wait a minute.
Uh, there are thousands of people in this artisanal mine, in this industrial
mine, uh, working in like ancient old world, miserable conditions.
Let's do something about that.
How about some PPE for everybody?
Um, how about a reasonable wage so they don't have to bring their kids in to
work just to survive?
Uh, how about eight hours a day instead of 12?
Um, how about we invest in some schools and some public health clinics while we're
here so that kids can go to school?
Um, why don't we help electrify this place?
Do you know that that part of the Congo that is home to more of the most
crucial mineral for rechargeable energy than the rest of the planet combined
doesn't even have electricity?
Uh, you go around in the villages, there's just, there's no electricity.
Uh, I mean, we can go on and on, right?
So, so the point is they need to understand it, accept it, accept
responsibility for these people at the bottom of the chain, treat them in the
same way that they treat people in headquarters.
Have you had any conversations with any of these people in tech or in EV
vehicles?
Uh, I hope, I hope I will be invited to do so maybe after this book comes out
and, um, uh, and if it gets enough attention, um, I, I will gladly, gladly
engage on solving this problem.
I am a humble servant to any company that wants to just understand and fix
their cobalt supply chain.
Is there any possibility that the CEOs and the people in upper management are
not aware of the scope of this problem?
It's hard for me to imagine that they're not aware.
So do you think it's just a convenient ignorance or is it a diffusion of
responsibility because they came into this company when all this already
existed?
Yeah. Interesting question. I think, um, I think some of it is business as
usual until someone forces them to think differently.
Um, I, I think another part of it, um, is it's easy not to accept
responsibility because they're so far away and there's so many levels in the
supply chain between toxic pit in the Congo
and shiny showroom in New York and, you know, Beijing, right?
That they're separated by layers and layers, uh, of a supply chain.
I mean, that's how the global economy works.
Um, so some of it is, well, uh, it's their responsibility and they point the
finger downstream, right?
Um, the battery maker should worry about this and the battery maker will point
and say, no, the cobalt refinery should worry about it.
The cobalt refineries say, no, the mining companies should worry about it.
The mining companies say, no, the Congolese government should worry about it.
And on down the list until the last finger is pointed at the kid caked in filth
in the pit.
So no one's accepting responsibility.
Um, I think, look, I think let's be charitable and say maybe the CEOs of these
companies aren't completely aware of the scale and severity.
I certainly wasn't when I first went there, uh, wasn't my business to know it.
Uh, but okay, let's say maybe they are not aware of this, the absolute scale
and severity of it.
Um, although they should be, uh, all right, now that the truth is out, let's
see, are they willing to actually work on this problem?
And I will, any CEO wants to go see what the bottom of their cobalt supply
chain looks like.
I will take them.
I will take them.
Come with me.
We'll fly economy or I'll go in your jet.
We'll go comfortably.
Either way, I will take you.
Let's, let's go down and see this is where your cobalt's coming from.
Now that you've seen the truth, um, let's fix this problem.
Because they're, these companies have geniuses who have revolutionized our
lives.
Solving dignity at the bottom of a cobalt supply chain, uh, is a simple
proposition relative to the problems they probably solve every day.
But they would have to address it in mass.
They would have to address it very publicly.
They would have to admit to this problem and they'd have to publicly state it
and make everyone aware, the consumer aware, that these things that we enjoy
that make our lives so convenient, these technological marvels that have
revolutionized our world, at the bottom of that is slave labor and child labor.
Yeah.
I think you put your finger on something very important because the first
question they would be asked is, well, how long have you known?
Right.
Right.
And that's the problem.
That's the problem.
And to admit it would be to admit guilt in at least some way.
Yeah.
Or willful ignorance or a pretending that they don't know.
Yeah, that's right.
All of the above.
Plus a callous disregard for their fellow human being, you know.
Because it's not shoved in their face.
It's not.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
That's right.
Yeah.
technologically magnificent. Isn't it fascinating the riches that stand atop
the shoulders of some
of the poorest and most degraded people in the world? It's bizarre, but it
speaks to the human
condition. It speaks to what we are. We're so complicated and twisted. Yeah,
yeah, we are.
And it's not like this is a new phenomenon, right? I mean, riches have been
built across the global
north on the shoulders of degraded people in the global south for centuries.
Right. We just like
to pretend that that's not the case today when it might be the worst case. You
know, the interesting
thing is, in some ways, this truth that we're talking about is uglier and more
violent and harmful
than slavery in the 1700s because we claim to live in a time when everyone has
equal human rights.
Right. And we're all created equal and treated equal. And, you know, it's that
it's the hypocrisy
that makes it so much more repugnant. You know, back then it's like, well, they
are fit to be slaves.
And it was the way of things. And that doesn't excuse it, you know, but the
violence had some kind of mental
and social, even religious justification centuries ago. And it took a band of
enlightened people to say,
no, that's not right. And abolitionists fought and fought and fought and won
freedom for slaves in the world.
Or did they? You know, because now we live in a time where you can't legally
own another person
or exploit them like a slave any on any patch of this planet. And yet and yet
it happens at the bottom
of our global economic order more than people realize. And what's what's what's
important about cobalt
is it's kind of the distillation of centuries of this arc. Because, as I said,
there's never been
a single example of of worse suffering
that generates more money and touches the lives of more people around the world
than than than this right here, the intense hypocrisy of this age we're living
in, especially in this
country, where we're so focused on social justice. And we're so focused on
equality and treating people
with kindness and dignity. And the fact that we're talking about this and
communicating on this on
devices that were constructed by slaves. Yeah, that's right. I mean,
that's so insane. It's so hard to admit. Yeah, it's so it's so hard to even
it's I believe every word you're saying, but there's a part of my mind that
doesn't want to accept it.
I understand that it could be possibly that fucked up. That's right. Like that
we're capable of it. Right.
You know, and it's surely we're better than this now. Right. I mean, haven't we
haven't we fought enough
fights, shed enough blood and made enough progress, you know, that that we're
better than this, that this
what we're talking about today can't and shouldn't exist. It shouldn't be
possible.
But the fact that it is, it speaks to that how little has actually changed in
some ways.
And the fact that a small handful of brave journalists are bringing this to
light
in light of so many problems that we know about in the world that get all of
our attention in the news
every day. But this is one of the most horrific. Yes. And it's it's very, very
difficult to get information about it.
By design. I mean, by design, you know, it's and it's all it's been that way.
It's it's
and it always starts with a handful, though, Joe.
I mean, great change starts with a handful of people who who stand up and say
this this won't
I can't tolerate this. We shouldn't tolerate it. Humanity should be better than
this.
And if they're lucky and persistent enough, you know, they build a social
movement that can achieve
some progress. We see this throughout history. The history of human rights
starts with some small group of people who want to see something change,
something important change and
build a movement around it. But it starts with truth. It has to start with
truth. It can't you
the dispelling the fictions that power tells tells us so that things can stay
the same.
It always starts with shining light into that darkness and bringing ground
truth out into the world.
That truth is so horrific, though. You could see how it would be human nature
for the people involved in
it to try to suppress it and ignore it and to try to figure out a way to keep
this information from
getting out because the amount of change that they would they would have to
impart
would be it's a monumental task to change the structure of how this stuff is is
acquired.
It's I you know that intellectually I can understand the reluctance to
acknowledge it
because yes, it's it makes you question
how these companies have been operating for years, right? And what else do we
not know?
Right. You know, what else do we not know?
There's going to be other problems. And the minute you acknowledge one,
people will inevitably ask, well, wait a minute. What else do I need to know
now?
What other problems could possibly exist? Oh, man.
So in terms of this particular industry, I mean, there's there's still there's
still
lingering problems with the microprocessor, those three TG conflict minerals in
eastern Congo.
There's all of that. None of that's been fixed.
It's just you know, people lose attention span. It's just that you can get
those things in a lot of other places.
Gold, especially tantalum tungsten, you can get those things in a lot of a lot
of other places.
So it's possible to actually redirect and kind of clean up a supply chain.
And I imagine much of that work has been done. But do we know
everything we need to know about how lithium is being pulled out of the ground?
Because that's the other crucial component to these batteries, be it human
rights or environmental
sustainability. Do we know everything we didn't need to know about the
manufacturing part of this?
I mean, you hear stories every once in a while, you know, these facilities in
China and they've got kids in there
and they're working 22 hours a day and they're not being paid that well.
And then it's quickly hush hush and problem solved. Don't worry about it.
I can't get into China. You know, I've tried a few times to get a visa.
Just I've not succeeded as of yet, but I'd love to go poking around in some of
those factories
and get a sense of what's really happening because I know from what I've seen
on the ground in the Congo
with Chinese mining companies, human rights is an afterthought. You know, it's
it doesn't it doesn't
enter into the calculus. It's resource and feed it up the chain. So stands to
reason that similar
things like with Uyghurs, you know, and there's actually some bipartisan
support on the Uyghur issue.
But, you know, there are possibly massive forced labor camps relating to
electronic manufacturing
as well as apparel, solar panels. And, you know, there's another whole truth
there that we don't
even have a grasp on. So, yeah, once you start opening the doors and say, OK,
yes, this is a big problem.
What are the other big problems out there? Because people will start looking
and then
then suddenly the bottom end of much of the global economic order is revealed
to be tainted
with an array of problematic labor conditions from child labor to sweatshop
labor to penny wage labor
to forced labor labor abuse. Why is everything so cheap? Right. Right. Why is
everything, number one,
one, made over there and then number two, so cheap? That's the, see, the logic
of slavery
wasn't ever really about cruelty for cruelty's sake. I mean, cruelty and
violence and racism were all a
part of it. But the logic of it was economic. That throughout history, for any
business you might run,
one of the highest cost components, if not the highest cost component, is labor.
So producers have
always tried to think, how do we bring down labor costs? How do we bring down
labor costs so we can make more
money? And slavery became the extreme of that. OK, let's nullify labor costs.
Let's nullify it. And so that logic, that impulse that drove so much of the
world economy for centuries,
it's not like it just went away because we wrote on paper that it's gone away.
And so especially in the era of globalized economy, you know, corporations will
seek out shadowy,
under-regulated labor markets because they're cheaper. And where do you often
find things like
child labor and slavery and cheap labor in the poor parts of the world? And
that's why so much of our
stuff is made over there. One of the things that was highlighted during the
pandemic was how
dependent we are on things that come from other countries. And there has been
some discussion
about constructing things in America and building things in America and having
things made here
under conditions that are controlled by our labor rules and the ethics and
morals that we operate under.
But it seems like we don't have the raw components. So even if that's the case,
just the raw components,
like if they decided to manufacture all of the cell phones that Apple makes,
they said, look, we have
to come to grips with the fact that it's inhumane, the conditions these people
work under in these
plants where they build the phones. We are now going to do this all in America,
all with unionized labor,
where they're paid very well and they have benefits. Still, you have to deal
with the raw components.
That's right. That's exactly right. There's no way around it. There's no way
around it. And why does
Apple not do that? Well, Apple is one of the richest companies that's ever
existed, which is insane.
When you think about the profit, literally all comes, it's all batteries.
Everything they make has
batteries. Everything. Everything. Every last piece of everything has cobalt in
that battery and they
all have rechargeable batteries. Right. And they make money hand over fist.
More money than anyone,
any company, maybe ever. And the companies all have at their forefront social
justice and ethics and
morals. Read their, read their press statements. Yeah. Read their press
statements. They, they,
they, every quarterly statement, every 10K, you know, uh, we're proud to uphold
human rights standards
throughout our supply chain. They all say always down to the mining level. They
know in the back of
their head, there's people who know the truth. So they put it out there, you
know, and all of our suppliers
participate in audits, uh, that there's no forced labor, no child labor, uh,
and so on. Um, so they
all say that. And, and yeah, so what would happen if Apple, and we don't, not
just to pick on them,
but of course they're the big, the big elephant, uh, in this conversation, um,
the biggest of them all.
So what would happen if they just shifted all their manufacturing here? Well,
they are shifting
their manufacturing at least somewhat away from China because of all, because
of the supply chain risks.
Yes. Um, and all the problems they're having at the very, the facilities
themselves where they're
having riots. Yes. Protests and shutting down production. And so they're
realizing that that's
an issue. That's right. But that's just, that doesn't, that's economic. So, and
a lot of that shifted to
India, um, uh, uh, which still has, you know, a lower wage labor market. So,
but why isn't it all built
here? Right. Why? I mean, they're here. Right. And why isn't it all? Why is
immense profits?
It's because of the profit, right? You'd actually have to pay people here, but
they have. And is it also
part of the problem that corporations have to exist on the structure of
constantly increasing revenue
every year and shareholder value, shareholder value, everything comes down to
shareholder value,
right? That's what drives their stock price. That's what drives their market
cap. It's shareholder
value. And what's that? That's your profits, uh, divided by the number of
shares outstanding,
right? Roughly speaking. Uh, and what's profits? Well, it's revenues minus
costs. Oh, costs labor.
And so we're back to that same thing. And so, okay, we can pay people in
America, you know,
25 bucks an hour plus benefits and a 401k and time off and all of this business.
And,
or we can pay the people over there three bucks an hour and no 401k. And right.
So that's what drives,
but as you rightfully noted, what about the, what about the raw materials?
Cause
there's not enough of that here, there or anywhere else. All, a lot of that is
in sub-Saharan Africa
in, uh, the Southern hemisphere. And so you'd still have to get cobalt and
other things, uh,
out of Africa. And so what I'm saying is
that's their chain. You see the, the blood for cobalt economy only exists
because
Apple, Samsung, Tesla, all the legacy car makers, all the tech companies,
they have demand for cobalt. And that creates this value chain. And the bottom
of the value chain is the
blood and misery we're talking about. So it only exists because of their demand
for it. So aren't
they responsible to fix the problem? It seems like they absolutely should be.
It seems like it. And yet none of them are accepting adequate responsibility.
And do you think that part of that is because of what we talked about before
with profits and
the rep, the, the obligation they have to their shareholders to do something
like this would
require just a fundamental change in the way they operate. The only thing that
I could think of that
would somehow or another shift this is some sort of a technological innovation
that allowed them to
create batteries with some new technology. So, okay. It's a couple of important,
important things here.
Um, I don't think it would cost all that much for them to solve this problem
very quickly.
Have you run numbers? I mean, let's, let's look at what's, what's the source of
the harm.
Okay. It's peasants and kids digging in unsafe conditions for a dollar to a day,
um, suffering injury,
toxic contamination, and death. So, uh, how do we address, uh, those harms?
What's the low hanging fruit?
All right. PPE. Gloves, hard hats, masks, goggles, whatever. How much can that
possibly cost?
Um, a decent wage so that parents don't have to bring their kids in to work
just to survive.
All right. Instead of a dollar or two a day, people in that part of the world
can probably
reasonably survive on $10 a day, a day, not an hour, a day. That's not going to
add up to too much.
Uh, then you don't have artisanal tunnel digging. Let the excavators do it. You
know, use proper heavy
equipment. Well, there's equipment down there. If they need a little more, how
much, how much could
that really cost? And you go down the list of these things that would help
solve a lot of the harms.
And then you add in a few things like invest in the local community that we
avail of, like build some
schools, some public health clinics and so on. It's not going to add up to that
much. I mean,
it would probably add up to what a company like Apple makes in a day.
And you'd solve huge parts of the problem. Not all of it, but a lot of the harm
and injury that's
being suffered could be avoided with some simple steps. Has anyone ever come to
Tim Cook and presented
him with this evidence and with this information and asked him to comment on it?
Uh, I don't know. Um, I'm, that's a really good question. Uh, I would love the
opportunity to
present it to him, uh, and ask him to comment on it. It probably wouldn't get
to him. You probably
wouldn't get past the PR department, uh, and the CSR team. And that would say,
no, we're, you know,
Apple's very aware and, uh, our, our supply chain is clean and we, we have
independent audits and so on.
And that would be the end of the discussion, right? I mean, um, but we have to
get past that fiction.
And I hope that some of what I'm doing and what others, uh, no doubt will do,
um, after my book
comes out, we'll, we'll move us past that, you know, just that, that, that
vacant vapid response
that we're aware that there are some problems in the Congo. It's a poor country.
We, uh, our supply
chain is audited and everything is, you know, is, is a okay, right as rain. Uh,
and we have to move,
we just have to move past that with truth. And then, and then the question is,
yeah, um, um,
will they engage? Would Tim Cook, Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella, Elon, the rest
of these and all of them,
I don't know the names of all the CEOs or the ones that come off the top of my
head,
but will they engage on it? Well, they say, okay, all right. Um, truth accepted,
uh, problem acknowledged,
uh, help us, uh, help us. And, and I, and many others, I'm sure would be only
so happy.
Um, and look, it should start with a, a trip. They just need to go and see for
themselves.
But they can't, right? Like how much resistance would they experience? I mean,
you're talking about
going in there with where there's commandos and Kalashnikovs guarding these
secrets.
Yeah. Fair, fair enough. Fair enough. Um, no, I mean, I'm not even giving them
an excuse. I'm just,
just sort of identifying the scope of what would be involved because it, this
would somehow impede on
profits. And a lot of these companies are run by Chinese corporations as well.
On, uh, yes. Yeah. No, no question. No question. That's a big part of the
problem. And we don't
have to mince our words. We don't have to mince our words about it. Um, they
are a big part of the
problem. Their government, their companies, the way they do business, um, uh,
is a, is a big part of
the problem. Um, but everybody knows it, you know, our tech companies and EV,
they know who they're in
business with, right? They're not, they're not oblivious to, um, how business
is done in China
and by Chinese companies on the ground in the Congo. Uh, part of the problem is
there's not even
one U S mining company in the Congo, um, to, to maybe show by a better example
of how to do things.
Uh, that's part of the problem. Um, it's, it's almost completely China plus
Glencore, uh, and one or two other
companies, maybe a Canadian one. And so on, but it's all, you know, last time I
was there,
there are 19 major industrial copper cobalt complexes, 15 are run by Chinese
companies.
Chinese companies means Chinese government. Um, Glencore has a few more and
then,
and then that's it. And then you're dealing with the same issues because these
companies,
these corporations are largely controlled by the government of China, which is
also responsible
for the forced labor camps and absolutely the treatment of the Uyghurs and
well, we have to decide, you know, I mean, we meaning American companies have
to decide,
you know, what's, what's the threshold? At what point, um, uh, uh,
do they have to make decisions around, um,
their corporate moral record? You know, they know what's happening in China and,
uh, with Chinese
companies and other parts of the world. Um, if I know it, they all know it.
Right. Um, but there's
just so much money at stake. There's an anxiety about, you know, saying, well,
we really need things
to be done better. Um, they just say it, uh, uh, don't worry, you know,
everything's audited.
Everything's okay. They just keep saying it and saying it and say, and all
right. So, um,
could CEOs get down there? I, yes, I take the point. That would be a little
challenge. I could
probably still arrange something. I could get them somewhere. We can, if I can
do it and I'm, you know,
have average intelligence and average means and resources, um, you know, we can
get some people
down there to see some truth. All right. And then I'll go the rest of the way.
I'll go the rest of
the way. And while we're there, while we're there, even if they just hang out
in a hotel in Lubumbashi
with their teams, you know, uh, they will hear about a tunnel collapse within
the first week.
I'll bring in some kids, uh, covered in filth and muck for them to see digging
their cobalt.
How about talk to some families? We'll just go to a few villages or I'll bring
them to the hotel.
Just talk to some families, let them tell you the truth. You know, yeah, they
can't go running
around militia mines. Uh, fair enough, but they can still get in country and
see the truth and hear
the truth. I can arrange it for them. Their own teams could probably arrange it
for them, right?
It just needs to be something they want to do that. They care enough about the
bottom of their chain.
They created this chain. No one put a gun to their head and said, put cobalt in
the battery.
No one forced them to do it. That just so happens that helps the battery
maintain thermal
stability and have maximum energy density, which means you don't have to plug
your stuff in as often
and your car can have a longer range electric car. Uh, that's why cobalt so
precious. Um,
and you mentioned alternate tech. No question. People are working on cobalt
free batteries
because of the conversation we're having right now. How much headway is being
made in that direction?
Um, there's progress for sure. For sure. Um, cause even if it weren't coming
out of a war torn country
through child labor and misery and, and, and so on, it's expensive, you know,
and even from trying to
reduce the cost of a battery cell, um, people are working on cobalt free chemistries
and there are
options out there. Um, what are those options? So there's things called solid
state batteries. Um,
there are formulations that either use much less cobalt. Um, there's some
lithium
iron phosphate is another formulation that doesn't have cobalt. Um, and you,
you sacrifice something,
right? Maybe a little bit of power, maybe a little bit of range, maybe a little
bit of thermal stability.
Nothing's ready, uh, uh, to replace cobalt entirely. Um, but there, there are
batteries that work
and work relatively well without cobalt, but that doesn't, let's say, let's say
you stop using cobalt
entirely tomorrow. Um, what about all the harm that's been done up until today?
Do we just forget
about it? Right. And what happens to those people if they do stop mining cobalt?
What happens to those
people that are, and there's an economy that even though it's a horrible
economy, that they're,
the way they get money for food is dependent right now. And you're talking
about hundreds
of thousands of hundreds of thousands of people. And the reason they're so
dependent
on those couple of dollars a day from cobalt is because the minds took over
everything.
I mean, millions of trees have been clear cut, arable land has just been wiped
out. So where there was an
agricultural economy, a fishing economy, some other ways to earn a living, you
know, it's,
it's almost all gone because mining has taken over everything. And mining has
likely destroyed the
environment. Destroyed the environment. So, uh, you know, the, the water, the
air, it's all massively
contaminated with heavy metals and toxic runoff. Uh, so, so they've been pushed
to the fringes.
I mean, the number of villages I would go to, and then a year later that
village was gone
because the, the, the, the nearby mine got bigger and those people get
displaced. And so there's,
uh, one, one Congolese people person told me, I'll never forget his words. Uh,
uh, he said,
soon there's going to be no place left in Congo for Congolese people. Uh, I
mean, that's the mining
provinces because the mines just keep growing and growing and people get
displaced and pushed to the
fringes. And then as a consequence, there's, there's almost nothing left to do
but dig, uh, because
it's also a way to make sure you get a dollar or two in your pocket that day.
It's the only way to make
sure. And that's the difference between, uh, survival and oblivion.
And we're only talking about survival. We're never talking about people making
enough money to escape
that life. No, it's not possible. No, no, no, no. No, they're always, they're,
they're always at the
precipice. I mean, there's nothing like saving money. You know, you don't, you
have a family, uh,
working, uh, two parents, uh, three kids, four kids, whatever it might be, you
know, in the aggregate,
maybe getting five, six dollars for the day. That's just base survival income,
you know,
just, uh, just enough to have some food and a hut, uh, and, and some clothes
now and again.
And again, no electricity, very little education. No, I mean, um, Congo has a 9%
electrification rate
and about 0.3 or 0.4% in rural areas. So like, you know, take out the big
cities and it's like,
there's just no electricity. Uh, um, maybe 20% of people have access to
sanitation. Uh, child mortality
is 11th or 10th worst in the world. You know, life expectancy is very short. Uh,
and in the mining
provinces, of course, there's so much toxic runoff from the mining companies
that fish stocks, uh,
animals, all contaminated. Agricultural land is contaminated. So people suffer
cancers. They
suffer kidney ailments. They suffer hard metal lung disease from breathing in,
um, toxic cobalt dust all
day. That includes the babies that are on their mother's backs, uh, acute
dermatitis. I mean,
the list goes on and on and on of all this injury and suffering, um, that's at
the bottom of this chain.
Whew. And when you're talking about these alternatives, like solid state
batteries and
all these different alternatives, how far off are they from implementing those
into the devices that we
have? So most of the new battery tech that's being developed is going to be for
EVs.
Uh, because that's where the big cobalt demand is, right? They, they have to
figure out ways of
minimizing or eliminating cobalt for electric vehicles. Right now, most of them
require, uh,
up to 10 kilograms of refined cobalt. Our smartphones have like 10 grams, so a
thousand times less.
Can that be recycled? Can old EVs, can they extract the cobalt? Great question.
Um, right now, the
recycling tech as I understand it doesn't produce a sufficient grade, um, uh,
to put back into an EV
battery. You see, for a car, you need a couple of things. Number one, you need
a high level of energy
density. That's so you have longer driving range, right? I mean, imagine you're
a consumer. You're
thinking, no, I've got my, my gas car. Do I want to buy an electric car? Oh,
what's the first thing you
think about? Do I have to plug it in, you know, every, you know, three times a
day? So you want
to have a lot of range. Um, you also think, well, now is this going to have
some kind of weak little
engine and I can't even get going on the highway and so on. So it needs to have
power, right? To,
to compete with an internal combustion V8 power engine. Uh, and then it needs
to be stable because
you don't want that battery catching on fire because it's overheating or
exploding, right? That's the
other way. So those, cobalt solves all those problems. And, um, there are,
there is new battery
tech, um, that will minimize or eliminate cobalt that addresses most of those.
It may not be as, uh,
give you the same range. It may not give you as much power, but it's perfectly
doable for probably mass,
mass consumer, but it's still, uh, and I think Tesla actually has some non-cobalt
batteries on the
market now, uh, in some of their cars, they're working hard to transition. Here
it is. Tesla is
already using cobalt-free LFP batteries in half of its new cars produced. Yeah.
So that's lithium ferrous
phosphate. Uh, one of the times of, uh, uh, yeah, iron phosphate, ferrous
phosphate, uh, one of the kinds,
uh, I mentioned that doesn't use cobalt. Um, so you sacrifice a little bit of
range, a little bit of
power. Um, uh, but they still have a lot of other cars with cobalt. Most of the,
uh, EVs have cobalt in
the batteries. Um, and then you obviously have this ramped up production across
all the major manufacturers.
That's right. Because look, it's, you know, um, there's probably 22, 24 million
EVs on the road
in the world right now. And if you look at the, the goals under Paris, uh, the
Paris accord, COP26,
you know, what, what they're forecasting to try to meet climate sustainability
goals,
you need something like two to 300 million EVs on the road by the end of this
decade.
Seven, eight years out. So you need a 10, 10 to 15 fold increase. Uh, so that's
where the demand
is coming from. And there's going to be cobalt in those batteries through the
end of the decade
and probably for decades to come, even if some manufacturers, uh, use alternate
formulations.
Um, it's not like cobalt is going to disappear and it's still going to be in
the phones and all,
because for phones and tablets and laptops, you don't have the same need for
that power, uh,
uh, uh, an energy density that you knew need with a car. So cobalt's going to
stay in our,
you know, gadgets and gizmos, uh, for a long time to come.
There's no alternative method of batteries that they've
come up with. I'm not, yeah, I, it's a good question. I'm not sure people are
even really
working on non cobalt batteries for smartphones and tablets. Maybe, maybe they
are. It's more the
EV sector because that's where, what, what people realize is there's just not
enough cobalt left to
meet demand. You know, we've had these conversations many times, but I've
always tried to figure out,
like we had, we had a conversation recently. We were trying to figure out what's
the most ethical
phone to buy. Like, is there a phone that's ethical to buy? But it doesn't seem
like there's any answer.
It's, it seems like at the very least, I mean, I don't think any phone is
manufactured in America.
Is that correct? No, no, no. They're all, they're all made, mostly China. You
know,
there's probably Nokia's are of course, um, I don't know if they're made in, uh,
most of it's
manufactured in Asia. And so even with just construction, there's no companies
that are
manufacturing or putting together a phone that is even constructed without the
use of extremely cheap
labor. No, quite right. That, that's right. You know, as you work up the chain,
it's not like the
problems are solved. Right. You know, even in, even when you get to the battery
component stage
and then the phone assembly stage, there's labor issues further up the chain.
They might not be as
horrific as what's happening in the Congo, but there's still overworked, penny
wage, cheap labor,
forced labor, um, low wage labor. All those problems, um, exist further up the
chain. That's why,
I mean, it's all assembled over there for a reason. Yeah. Uh, and it comes down
to increasing shareholder
value and, you know, stock option value, uh, and, and yeah, to be fair, pension
fund value, 401k value.
I mean, you know, um, people, people want their retirements account, retirement
accounts to,
to continue growing as well. And so, you know, there's this phrase, the double
bottom line,
right? That we can't just have companies running on a single bottom line, which
is
earnings per share, net profit, uh, that there's another bottom line relating
to sustainability and,
and human rights and so on that needs to be incorporated. And right now it's
still,
it's incorporated in terms of verbiage, uh, but not so much action.
But even the, the, the really confusing thing to me is that even if we decided
like we will,
are willing to pay more money to have a phone that's constructed and
manufactured with ethics
and morals and that we align with here in America, even if we did it in America,
we still have the material
issue. You still have that issue. And unless there's some sort of a massive
technological revolution
where they figure out some new source of energy. Well, they did have that, what
was it, the fission
fusion where they actually created energy, uh, a week or two ago. And I'm, you
know, that I'm sure
is many, many years away from being put in phones and all, but there'll be, you
know, there will continue
to be, um, technological advancement. There's nothing immediate or on the
horizon, um, that would solve
these problems today or account for the harms of the past. It's such a damning
indictment
on the worst case scenario of, of, of human beings, of what we're capable of,
what, what kind of horrors
we're capable. Yeah, that's, I think, you know, that's what really hurts and,
and hits hard. Um,
when I do the research I do to see the, the cruelty between, um, that we're
capable of,
uh, and the, the callous disregard, you know, the, they don't count as much, um,
mentality. They don't have a voice. They definitely don't have a voice and
voice is everything,
everything voice. I mean, that's why what you're doing is so important because
you are through your
book and through doing something like this podcast, you're giving it a voice
that it didn't have before.
And even to me, someone who was aware of it, who's seen documentaries on the
horrific conditions,
like, uh, the, the facilities that manufacture the phones and even the cobalt
mines.
Yeah. You're explaining it in a way that's undeniable. Well, it's, uh, yeah,
the, it's voice,
voice is everything. I, I hope, uh, my book amplifies the voices of the Congolese
people. It's
written around their voices, their truth. Um, I, I'm trying to be an invisible
pass through or conduit
as much as I can. Um, uh, it's hard to keep my emotions out of it entirely. It's
impossible.
Yeah. It's impossible. You, you, I'm at the verge of crying through this whole
podcast.
It's, uh, but this, and this podcast, Joe, you know, you've, you've amplified
their voices, um,
immeasurably in this, in this moment right now. I mean, probably more than my
book ever will,
you know, millions more people listen to you than, uh, will, will likely read
my book. Uh,
uh, but it all adds up, you know, you've made such a powerful choice in
bringing me here today.
Uh, I'm grateful for it on behalf of the people in the Congo who are crying out
every day. I think
of them every day. I mean, I, I have the towns in my little, you know, on my
phone. I check the
weather there. I try to just stay connected when I'm, even when I'm far away
because I think of them
constantly. I mean, there are faces that I see their mothers I met, oh man,
just pounding their
chests in torture because a child was buried alive. I mean, can you imagine as
a parent thinking through
that? You know, what was that? What was my son's final thoughts buried beneath
the cold, merciless
dirt digging for cobalt? Cause we needed that dollar. Like what were his final
thoughts? The, uh, for a
parent to relive that day after day, that torture, you know, and I've, I've
seen it and I felt it.
It's so painful and that we're capable of this as a, as a species, as a
civilization, you know, that
we're capable of tolerating this or looking the other way. And when I say we, I
mean, just our broader
economic order. You know, there are many people with compassion, uh, who care
deeply, uh, but
our civilization writ large is tolerating so much violence against some of the
most vulnerable and
impoverished people in the world. And for what? For our convenience, for money.
Uh,
Well, not only that, there's so much of what we already have that's good enough,
but yet we have
this constant desire for technological innovation that requires more and more
and more. Yeah.
The phones that we have five years ago are more than sufficient to operate our
lives.
That's right. And haven't, uh, haven't we been made fools of to, to be made to
think we have to
keep getting the newest everything. It's so bizarre. It's such a bizarre desire
that we have, but it
seems to be a part of human beings. This constant thirst for technological
innovation. Yeah. Just an
improvement. I've got the newest one. Did you get the newest one? Right. You
know that we, you know,
someone sold us that mentality and, and we labor under it and keep consuming
and consuming, uh, as a result.
And that consumption feeds down the chain because it has to be met. And, and I
think it's been done to us,
you know, I, this, this feeling that we have to just keep absorbing and buying
and consuming things,
especially in the West, you know, um, uh, because that feeds profits. Yeah.
When you were over there
and you had all these people that aided you in this investigation, what can be
done to protect those
people? Because I got to imagine when this information comes out, they're going
to try to figure out how
you got access. Yes. So, um, I thought I had, I have thought and continue to
think very carefully about
that. Um, uh, you know, one, one thing is I, I will never, uh, you know, reveal
the names or identities
of the people who helped me ever. Um, uh, and I was very careful about when I
went around, um, to see
who else is looking, right? Um, um, because if the wrong person sees me with
this person,
that could be a problem down the road. Was your identity ever revealed?
Was there ever a situation where people knew what you were doing when you were
in trouble
or in danger? Yeah, many times. I mean, um,
yeah, it's, there's a very thin margin between pushing to find the truth
and then, uh, putting people at risk. Um, and when in doubt, I aired on the
side of
not putting people at risk. Well, it seems like what was exposed just by
watching the video that you took
is just, it's so undeniable. It's, it's utterly, that's, it's utterly undeniable.
The truth
is right there. All they have to do is want to see it. It seems so bizarre
that it takes a person like you to write a book and to go over there and risk
your life
and then to come on a podcast and discuss it and to write a book and distribute
that book,
that this isn't something that's on every major news channel, every newspaper
on the front page
every day. Like, look what we're doing. Like, look at the harm we're causing.
Look at what we're worried.
There's so many, there's so many things that we're worried about in this
country that could be considered
trivial in comparison. Who buys the ads on a lot of those major news channels?
Yeah. Okay. And I say that not just glibly because I, after I came back from
one of my trips,
you know, I've written a few op-eds along the way, just talking about what I've
seen. And, um,
after my last trip, um, I wasn't able to go in 2020 because of the pandemic. I
got back in 2021 and I
was able to see the impact of the pandemic on the people down there, by the way,
which is another
important thing we should mention. Um, but I was writing up an op-ed, um, uh,
uh, and the, the point
of it was that, um, you know, we relied more than ever on our rechargeable
devices during lockdowns and
so on in order to continue our jobs and education. Right. I mean, a lot of
people did online school,
especially in the first part of the pandemic during the lockdowns work from
home, all that,
right? So demand for rechargeable gadgets increased, which meant demand for cobalt
increased.
And I was curious, well, what happened down there at the other end of the chain?
Uh, and when I finally
got back down there, what I saw was, um, a lot of the big mining companies also,
uh, shuttered for weeks
and months, especially in the beginning, especially the beginning when people
didn't know what was going
on. Um, but it's not like demand for cobalt stopped. It actually went up
because everyone
was buying more stuff to do work from home and school from home. So there was
massive pressure
pushing the peasant population into the trenches and pits to keep the cobalt
flowing and they got sick
and they got unwell and their income certainly didn't improve. Uh, kids were
pulled out of school,
the ones that were in school, um, to keep the cobalt flowing. And I wrote a
little op-ed about it. Um,
and I had the hardest time placing it in mainstream media. How so?
What was told to me by a couple of journalist colleagues off the record was
you're coming at companies that buy too much advertising. Jesus. And that was,
that's another
part of this whole thing, right? Uh, that when you mentioned, well, why isn't
it plastered all over
mainstream media? Um, now to be fair, there's been some journalism on it, some
newspaper articles,
some stories, uh, and some mainstream media has been down there to do the odd
story, but they only go to
a point. You know, they don't go to the, they don't pierce to the truth. And,
uh, that's something
I had to contend with that I didn't, that I didn't think I would. And I had to
sort of in the end kind
of tweak and dial back my op-ed and I got it placed up on, um, CNN, uh, website,
uh, last December,
um, after that, after that last trip I took. Um, uh, but it should be
everywhere. We should be talking
about it. Um, the same way years ago, everyone was talking about sweatshops and
Nike and, you know,
that got a lot of attention and then blood diamonds. And we all talked about
that. And we've, we talk
about it when it punches through, you know, and gets to enough people, uh, and
gets coverage. And, uh,
and so that day will come for a cobalt. It's coming soon. Uh, I'm going to keep
pushing until it comes.
Uh, and then I'm going to stand back and, and let people deal with this and
solve these problems,
people, meaning these companies. And if they want help, I'm here.
It's also this undeniable feeling that history will not be kind to this era.
When we look back at this
and about how people have conveniently ignored this or willfully tried to not
just ignore the truth,
but cover it. Yeah. You know, that's, that's something it's just that it's the
tragedy on top
of the tragedy that, uh, it didn't have to be, it didn't have to be this way.
It, it, it, and it
doesn't have to be this way. Um, it just takes accepting responsibility. And I
know we've talked
about why that may be problematic and lead to some blowback and whatnot, but
you know what? One day
it's going to happen is it will have to happen. Um, people are going to demand
that it happens once
they learn the truth. You know, the very first abolitionists back in the late
1700s, they lived
in a time where slavery was okay. Everybody had slaves. Um, it's the way things
were. And there were
a handful of people who came together. They were in London, 1787. Uh, and they
said, no, this is not okay.
Um, and they, they operated on a belief that if the average person, average
person is good in their
heart, and if they know the truth, they'll do something about it. And there
were some in the
group that were more cynical and they know, what are you talking about? People
are self-interested.
They don't want things disrupted. Power definitely doesn't want things
disrupted. Um, and there was
this ideological tussle, but in the end they were right. They brought the truth
out,
people cared, enough people cared, and things had to change. And they did
change, at least on paper.
Now, the legacies of, um, how slavery has persisted and so on, that's another
conversation. But
the first movement succeeded because of this idea, bring the truth. That first
Congo horror,
same thing. The first human rights movement of the 20th century was shine light
into the heart of
darkness in the Congo. And there were people who went down there and they
gathered testimonies and
they gathered data and they brought it to the world. And power said, no, no, no.
It's a fiction.
Don't believe what they're saying. This is nonsense. Everything's fine down
there. We're, we're saving
these people. They're working well and they're happy. And they kept coming at
it with truth and truth and
then finally things changed. Leopold's regime was brought down in that case.
And the same thing will
happen today. It's just a question of when. Uh, and when enough people hear
about it, uh, and especially
because it touches their lives, right? Uh, every single day, you can't send a,
a tweet. You can't
check your email. You can't check Instagram. You can't do social media. You can't
function. I mean, 99.9%
of the people who are probably going to listen to us have this conversation
will do so on a gadget that
has cobalt in the battery. You know, so it touches all of our lives. And when
enough people know that truth,
they're going to say no, not tolerable. Uh, and then these companies are going
to have to account for
all of it. Uh, so they might as well get started. I hope, I wish they would, uh,
but it will be forced
upon them. Uh, I think by the good people of this, uh, of this world eventually.
And the other option,
which, which is even more horrific is that nothing changes. I suppose, um,
there's always the possibility,
you know, that they'll continue to operate as they do now and ignore this. And
hopefully this won't
get amplified to the point where there's a public outrage. I think that's the,
I think that's their
hope, you know, that just kick the can, keep kicking it down field. That is
crazy. Um, and you know,
put out our PR statements and, and, and say that we're doing good things and
working on it. And it's
not in my supply chain. This is the thing you see, they all say, okay, there's
problems there,
but it's not in my supply chain. It's in the other guy's supply chain. And they're
all saying that. And
you think, well, if it's nobody's supply chain, where's all that cobalt going?
Uh, but I think they,
the, the practice they've been operating under all this time is keep it shrouded,
keep business going,
uh, keep the story suppressed, keep attention elsewhere and just keep it going
until we figure
out something else, some other tech. We don't need cobalt. We find some other
alternative and then we
won't have to deal with it. In which case it still doesn't make up for the fact
that those people
that were involved in this are, are still captured by it. That's right. It
doesn't and have suffered,
uh, and will be left in abject poverty with a destroyed environment, a
contaminated environment,
uh, and the sudden loss of what meager income, uh, they were able to generate
now living in a place
where there's just nothing left. When you wrote this book and when you decided
to do podcasts and
discuss this, what do you believe to be the best case scenario for how it's
received?
Best case scenario. I, I believe change comes from the ground up. I think power
has to be brought along
the way and sometimes it's top down, uh, but usually important advancements in
human rights come from
the ground up. So my hope is, uh, enough people read this book, enough people
feel it in their hearts,
feel connected to those kids in the Congo, the brothers and sisters in the
Congo, uh, feel that they are
all part of the same chain and, and demand that the corporations atop, uh, the
cobalt value chain
solve the problem. Now there'll be another whole set of roadblocks at that
point because they'll say,
oh no, we are solving it. Don't worry. Don't worry. And, and so they'll, they'll
have to be a push.
There's always has to be a push. You know, when the first abolitionists tried
to abolish slavery,
the slave owner said, okay, yeah, we've, we've implemented some changes and
conditions now in
the plantations in the West Indies are not so bad. So don't worry about it.
Just get back to your daily
lives. And, and so you have to keep pushing, you have to keep pushing truth.
When the truth seekers
brought light about what was happening in Leopold's Congo, he said, no, no, no,
my, my soldiers aren't
chopping off hands when they don't meet their quota. Uh, those are wild boars.
They actually said this.
Those are wild boar accidents. Uh, and so they have to just keep coming at it,
keep coming at it. And the same will happen now. This is the first salvo.
This will be, this will be the first book on this topic. This is probably the
first podcast on this
topic. Um, this is the first salvo, uh, and there will have to be much more
behind it. So my hope,
my dream is that this will stir the outrage of enough people that they will not
stop until the
degradation of poor Congolese people at the bottom of this supply chain is
resolved.
I don't know, uh, how much more we can say on this. Well, yeah, we've talked it
out. Yeah,
that's what I'm saying. I mean, this is, uh, it is what it is. It's right in
front of our face.
And now this information is going to get to the people at Samsung and at Apple
and at Tesla and all
these companies that are involved in this, it appears that Tesla at least is
aware of it with their,
their cobalt free batteries. But yeah, this is, I mean, it's undeniably
horrific and it's, it's,
it's impossible to imagine that it was allowed to get to this position.
That's the thing, Joe. I mean, it didn't have to be this way. They could have
just set it up right
at the beginning and simply done the things they said they were doing.
If these were American corporations involved in the extraction of cobalt,
do you think that things could have been different? Do you think that if these
were
Absolutely. No, no, no. Look, you can't, an American company anywhere in the
world cannot
behave the way some of these Chinese companies are behaving. And, you know,
there was one American
company down there, uh, Freeport Mac Moran had, uh, the largest copper cobalt
concession in the Congo.
They sold it to a Chinese company in 2006 for $2.65 billion. And with that left,
the only American
presence in the mining provinces of the Congo. And it's been a down, but
downward spiral since then.
Because you see, had at least one American company stayed, if not more,
the chain would have felt tighter because America would be on the ground there
right now. They just
think, no, no problem is way over there. These Chinese companies talk to them.
It's their responsibility
to, to, to do things right. And, and if an American company had stayed there or
even, uh, yeah, it would
have been different. I, I, I do fundamentally believe that, and we need to have
a presence there.
It was, we're the, we're the other way of doing business. I'm not saying our
companies are perfect.
The whole conversation we're having right now is because they have allowed a
massive human invasion
of human rights to persist at the bottom of their chains. But it would have
made a difference. I do
believe that. Uh, and, and there needs to be more, uh, ground presence, um, by
American companies in the
Congo. But yeah, we've, look, we've, there should, there's good, there will
need to be more conversations
about this. I mean, you, me and Tim Cook should have a, a nice sit down or you,
me and Elon should
have a nice sit down and just let's solve this problem. Let's accept the truth.
Let's solve this
problem. I am a humble servant to any CEO that wants to solve this problem. Uh,
I just want to see,
see those faces that are etched in my mind and burned in my heart, the scenes I've,
uh,
I've, I've, I've witnessed the testimonies of horror that I've, I've heard, uh,
and that will be amplified
by the book, by this podcast and hopefully by other media as the story gets out
there. Uh, I just want
that pain to be closed. Is there any potential for a Western company, an
American company or any company
that operates under a much higher example of ethics and morals entering into
the space? Or is all that
area completely controlled by Chinese? It's controlled. Uh, China has 70 to 80%
of the production of copper
cobalt ore coming out of the Congo. Uh, Glencore is the only other behemoth
down there. And they are from?
A Swiss, Swiss UK company. And do they operate differently? Uh, they're, you
know, they've got a,
they've got their own checkered, uh, past. They're under investigation by the U.S.
and UK and Swiss
governments for corruption, bribery, fraud, um, in the Congo as well as other
places. I think they paid
some fines for it. Um, a lot of artisanal cobalt flows into their supply chain
as well based on what
I've seen on the ground. Um, but, but there's, yeah, China, China has 70 to 80%
of the production of
raw copper cobalt ore. They produced last year, 75% of the world's supply of
refined cobalt. And the, uh,
two of the top five biggest battery manufacturers in the world are Chinese
companies. Uh, the biggest one,
CATL has a one third market share by itself, all the batteries and all the cars
and gadgets and gizmos.
Um, so they, they, they control it. Um, and that, that's part of the problem.
So was there ever an opportunity for American corporations to control? I mean,
when they realized that cobalt was such a, an integral part of this
technological age that we
live in right now, was there an opportunity for them to go in and implement
their own standards
and extract cobalt in a more ethical way? Yeah. They realized it too late. Um,
China saw it,
you know, they signed a big deal with, um, Congolese government 2009, which
opened the door
to Chinese mining companies early ages. Yeah. They saw it. They saw it way back.
Um,
I mean the world, they cornered the cobalt market before the world knew what
was going on.
And, um, Freeport was there. They left in 2006. Unfortunately, um, actually
talked to an executive
over there who, who was one of the people running that concession and, uh, the
way he explained it,
they were on the wrong end of some oil and gas investments and they had to cut
debt. Um, uh,
and so this sale was, was one of the ways they did it. Um, but, and ever since
then there's just,
there's been no U S presence. Um, it's almost all Chinese companies. They
cornered the market
early on. And even if there was, would they be able to operate in a competitive
environment,
given the fact that they do have to abide by their shareholders and this, uh,
philosophy of
continuing to increase revenue every quarter? Yeah. You know, we're speculating
here, right? Um,
I mean, cause the, one of the things is once you get down into that part of the
world,
uh, everything just works a little differently. Um, uh, but you know, we have
things like the foreign
corrupt practices act. I mean, we've got certain laws that mean you can't go
around bribing people and,
um, engaging in shady behavior. And I'm not saying it doesn't happen, but, um,
you know,
someone brings to light that your mining company has in this case, a U S
company, uh, child labor,
you know, someone's going to order up a congressional hearing on it and there's
going to be heat and
then journalists are going to jump on it. And it's just harder to get away with
it for as long and as
severely as companies from other countries have gotten away with it. Um, uh,
and the only reason
the top of the chain companies, which are based here have gotten away with it
is because there
are another degree or two removed from the bottom. But I, this is the, the
fundamental truth. The entire
value chain only exists because of their demand for this substance. It wouldn't
exist. No one forced
anybody to put cobalt in a battery. Um, so they created the demand and they
have to start with the solutions.
This is probably one of the heaviest podcasts I've ever done, but I'm sorry.
Listen, no, don't apologize.
I thank you. Thank you very much. And thank you for your bravery and what you've
done in, in exposing
this and, and in going there. It's, uh, it's very hard to accept, but I think
that this information,
this is the first step. And as you said, the first salvo. Well, it, it means
the world to me, Joe, the world to me, not for me, but for the people I know
and I see in my nightmares.
It means the world that you invited me to come and talk about this. Um, uh,
because you amplify
this story and their truth and their voices to the point where maybe some good
can actually start to
happen. And if that's the outcome, man, then, you know, we have spent a
preciously valuable couple
hours together. Well, I hope that is the case. And so once again, your book is
available January 31st.
It's called cobalt red, how the blood of the Congo powers our lives.
Thank you very much. Thank you for everything. Really, really appreciate what
you've done.
Thank you. Bye everybody.
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